Wherever You Will Go, Chapter 14

Clark/Chloe
Season 6, following my story "Ever the Same"
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Read the previous chapter here.
Read the story from the beginning here.

My body! Mine! Get out!

Chloe let her connection with Clark fade, so as to focus entirely on Zod. She wasn't connected emotionally with Zod, and yet she could feel his surprise and shock as her spirit attacked his, fighting to expel him. With no one at the helm, their body stumbled back, reeling and staggering.

And then Zod recovered from his initial surprise and fought back, like the warrior he was.

What are you doing here, human? I banished you to the Phantom Zone.

Zod unleashed a blow that Chloe felt like a vicious strike across the face. She gathered herself and struck back with all her strength, firing off a violent mental attack.

I came back. Now give me back my body!

Stupid girl. She could hear the sneer in Zod's mental voice, and she wondered how they could hear each other. Presumably it was because they were both inside the same body. Their thoughts were in the same brain, and thus clear to one another. Don't you realize that even if you force me to leave this body, I can take over another one instantly? All the soldiers lining this room have been engineered to make them physically superior. Any one of them will suit my purposes.

Nice, Chloe snarled, slamming into Zod again. She might not be a warrior, but she was seriously ticked off. A roomful of spares.

Yes. Zod sounded breathless, as if she was succeeding in hurting him. There is no way you can win. You may as well surrender.

I don't surrender, you bastard.

You can be forced into surrender... with enough pain. A violent blow almost forced Chloe right out of her body. She dug in and hung on desperately. You do not have the strength to defy me. Look at Kal-El. Pain forced him to surrender to me. He was weak.

Clark is the strongest man I know. No one could stand against that pain. The memory of the agony she'd felt coming from Clark spurred her on, and she battered at Zod with all her might. No one could be strong enough to stand against that!

Kal-El is a weakling and a coward, Zod sneered. He was fighting in earnest now, and every blow hurt. Chloe realized with a feeling of sick despair that she was losing. And in the end, you will be proven to be exactly the same. No one defies me for long.

Damn you, you fucking bastard...

Chloe aimed another strike at Zod, but somehow she missed. They were in the same body, and yet he'd managed to dodge her blow. He struck back with another vicious hit. It crashed into her, hurting like hell.

You cannot defy me, human.

Deep down she was terribly afraid he was right. She was losing, being beaten into submission, exactly as Clark had been...

Clark.

Suddenly she knew what she had to do.

Using every bit of her flagging strength, she reached out for Clark through their bond, finding his consciousness. The horrible agony washed over her again. She wanted to pull back, but instead she embraced it, drawing it fully into her awareness.

And then she turned it toward Zod.

Defy this, you son of a bitch.

At the onslaught of pain, Zod screamed, a terrible, high-pitched sound of agony. Suddenly he was yanking away from her, cringing in a far corner of their body. No! Make it stop!

Fueled by her need to protect Clark, Chloe stalked him relentlessly, channeling and focusing the pain, pouring it into Zod's consciousness. Hurts, doesn't it?

No... no... please...

She didn't let his desperate pleas sway her. Ordinarily she wasn't given to cruelty, but she remembered that he was responsible for Clark's terrible pain, and for the smoke hanging over the Metropolis skyline.

Zod was ruthless and brutal and evil, and he had to be stopped.

It's been a long time since you had a corporeal existence, isn't it? She followed him as he retreated, forcing him to feel Clark's agony as if it were his own. You've forgotten what it's like to feel pain. And then when you came to Earth, you made yourself a nice invulnerable body so you didn't have to worry about stuff like that.

Zod was whimpering like a small child now, making wordless sounds of horror and agony and fear.

Well, guess what? Chloe hammered away at him brutally, letting every bit of the agony Clark was experiencing wash over Zod. In the real world, pain hurts, asshole. And enough of it can make anyone surrender.

She aimed one last burst of the awful pain at Zod.

Get the hell out of my body, you bastard.

Zod gave one final whimper, sounding like a kicked puppy, and then suddenly he turned tail and fled. Chloe staggered as her consciousness settled firmly into her body.

She was herself again.

She cut her mental connection with Clark, because now that she had a body, the pain would incapacitate her very quickly. She clicked the control at her waist in a reverse of what she'd seen Zod do, and his soft sobs died into silence.

As her eyes came back into focus, she saw something dark and insubstantial flitting around the room. It was difficult to focus on, more like a moving shadow than anything. No one else seemed aware of it, and she guessed she could see it only because she was looking for it.

Zod was looking for another body, and she realized bleakly that had no way of stopping him from choosing whichever one he wanted.

And once he had a body, he would simply kill her and Clark.

As she stared at the wraith, wondering what the hell she could do to stop it, her eye was caught by a movement at the doorway. Someone stepped into the room, holding out a hand.

The dark shadow squirmed and struggled, but seemed to be irresistibly drawn toward the newcomer. Suddenly the wraith was sucked into the outstretched hand, disappearing in a startling flash of white light.

Zod was gone.

Chloe stared at their savior blankly. She saw the five-sided crystal in the newcomer's hand, and her mouth opened, but no words came out. She couldn't have been more stunned if she'd been hit in the head with a brick.

"Hello, Chloesullivan-El," said Raya.

Read Chapter 15 here.